genessia | Action | Bay and Exterior

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Action | Bay and Exterior

[Disorientation was not unknown to Fenris. He’d experienced it several times in his past, but never quite in such a way. Uncertain what the pamphlet suggested aside from images of the device included in the box, he grumbled and shoved the pamphlet, the red papers included, along with the phone, into a pouch at his waist and strode through the water without hesitation. He’d faced demons and worse before, and while he was alone, he certainly wasn’t going to allow the weakness of fear show, and the spiked armor and large sword lashed to his back went a long way to help the image along.

When he approached the stand on which Weiss’ Transmission played, he glared at it but did not balk. Magic, then. Of course. He’d never heard of this Genessia, but at least the necklace was familiar. So, their kidnappers have pretty chains, then. It didn’t change what they were and he grimaced at the thought. This was all a grand deception, to be sure, even for a former slave as valuable as himself, so he had no reason to doubt the image witch’s integrity.

Still, as much as it pained him to do so, he needed more information than her repeating message supplied. Surely he wasn’t alone in this place, for this witch would not have seen fit to spend the energy to place this message here for only his benefit, and so he took up a spot leaning against the side of the map booth and would address anyone who happened past.]

You, there. I...require assistance, if you've the mind.

[He’ll not force anyone, but manners aren’t exactly his forte.]

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If nothing else, Fenris has a sharp mind, and he's able to follow along with her explanation as she reads the pamphlet, pulling the phone from his pocket and following her instructions. His frown deepens as she explains the area, the funds, and he looks over to her as she finishes, inclining his head.

"Not the best news, but...you have my thanks."

He hesitates, his manners still needing a lot more work, before he offers her a hand. "My...name is Fenris." For lack of any better. It's the only one he knows, at least.

Now that her attention isn't on the words on the pamphlet, Alley eyes Fenris again. Those markings on the guy look a lot like vallaslin, don't they? But that's... not any kind of ink she's ever seen the Dalish use. Sure, vallaslin can be white, but the texture is all wrong. And... thick. Vallaslin doesn't darken the skin around the ink.

But don't worry, Fenris, you're not the only socially-stunted one here. At the hand offer, Alleyana doesn't even think about it and just gives him the pamphlet back.

...What? Not what she was supposed to do? Whoops.

"I'm Alley." Weird to not tack on a lot more, these days, isn't it? "This is going to sound like a weird question either way, but there's a reason I'm asking," the Inquisitor gestures up at one of her own ears vaguely with her right hand. That left hand just stays frozen as it had been to support the opened pamphlet in her palm, as though she's forgotten it can move. "Are you actually an elf?"

It's all the same to Fenris, as he'd rather just have his pamphlet back than shake hands. He takes the folded paper, with what is apparently paper currency, back from her without comment.

He raises a dark eyebrow at her question, though, tilting his head to the side curiously.

"Yes...what else would I be?"

Edited (words just get jumbled in my head sometimes) 2017-09-15 01:12 (UTC)

"No idea; you meet enough people here, you stop assuming basic things like that. I've met other elves, and I've met people that look just like us but weren't elven at all. Different worlds, just like the thing says." And after a brief pause, because the only other elf she'd ran into had been from the same world, if not the same time... "Are you from Thedas?"

Although if he is, Alley is pretty sure that just like Merrill, he's from a different time. Earlier than the time in which the Inquisition logo on her breastplate would be known by everyone and not just Chantry scholars and the Seekers.

Other worlds, the spectral woman had said. He supposed there was some truth to it after all, then. He bit back a sarcastic comment and nodded instead.

"Yes. I was...most recently in Kirkwall, in the Free Marches."

"I'm familiar with the location," and Xenon, who wanted her to trade in her hand when she was done using it. Pity it had crumbled away after becoming stone.

"I've also met people from our world from different times," Merrill. "And from alternative times entirely," Hawke. "Anything of note go down in Kirkwall recently?"

"Not so much...'going down', so much as 'attempting to boil over'. Tensions are rising with the stranded Qunari, mostly over belongings."

He narrows his eyes at her, though. "What others?"

"From what I've heard, 'attempting to boil over' is a good day in Kirkwall. If that city isn't literally cursed, it certainly is figuratively."

The Qunari, huh? So they hadn't attacked yet. That puts Fenris... yeah, way behind Alleyana in the timeline. This would have been a lot more annoying for her to grasp if she hadn't accidentally time-traveled a year forward and then back again with Dorian while attempting to secure the mages for the Inquisition.

...Honestly, at a certain point you just started rolling with the weird shit.

Alleyana only now finally remembers her left arm isn't just a bar, now, and stiffly lowers it from cupping a pamphlet that isn't there anymore.

"A couple people from Kirkwall, actually; Merrill, Hawke briefly -- both are gone now. A couple of my people who you wouldn't know; Cole was here for a while, now Dorian. I've heard Bull was here at some point. People come and go, seems like."

The elf actually scoffed, though judging from the smirk, it might have been meant as a chuckle. "The city has enough Maleficar for at least one lifetime of curses."

Not to mention it's plagued by Tevinter slavers. Only fitting. The current rulers of the place chose to use the former center of the Tevinter slave trade as a home. What did they expect?

The later names she mentioned meant nothing to him, but Merrill..Hawke...

His lip curled in a sneer. "Merrill. Did she bring her habits with her?"

"Which ones?" Alleyana quirked an eyebrow, and folded her arms, if a bit awkwardly with the left. "Being a know-it-all about anything even vaguely within the scope of a Keeper, or refusing to figure out how to navigate via buildings as landmarks instead of trees, rocks, and old statues?"

They'd gotten along... okay, but there had definitely been some clashing over Dalish lore, and who was at fault for a random person getting possessed by a demonic sword they'd taken down in a bounty.

Her dalish superiority not withstanding, there was a far more fundamental reason Fenris disliked the girl.

"Blood magic."

And he left it at that for the moment, little more needing to be said.

"Ah? No, that never came up. She used purely elemental magics around me, the few times she had reason to cast. Took her on a mission and it was pretty much... rocks."

A slight shrug.

"I'm almost disappointed now; I haven't gotten to fight any proper demons in a while."

He scoffs, shaking his head at the thought. She certainly never hesitated in their presence. She could control it, she said. They all thought that.

"Strange. Why hide it?" His tone was questioning.

"You have a strange idea of entertainment."

With her arms still folded, Alleyana gave another shrug. "We're stuck on a world even weirder than Thedas, and that's honestly saying something. At least fighting demons makes sense; not much else here does."

As for Merrill...

"I don't know, my being the Inquisitor probably had something to do with her tact on the subject. You're from an earlier time than I am, so I know that doesn't make much sense, but the Inquisition is basically what the Templars -- and Seekers -- started out as. We were reinstated when the Veil got ripped open and Thedas got flooded with demons."

"The...Veil was ripped open?" Or would be, but how, why? What did that mean? He shook his head, being unable to conceive of something that could do such a thing.

"How?" He looked around, trying to get a bearing on the situation. How the Veil may or may not be opened at some unknown point in the future didn't matter. "We can discuss that later." Which he surprised himself by saying. Apparently, talking with her later was on the table.

"I could sum it up pretty well, being the one who had to fix it... twice," Alleyana unfolded her arms and gestured vaguely up at the sky, even though it was a different sky and on a different world. "But... you're dealing with a lot right now, right."

On a whole new world, and all that. Whelp.

"Where's your phone? The device, I can show you how to use the network without needing to read or write."

He nodded, reaching into the pouch at his belt to retrieve the 'phone' and offered it to her. "Yes, this...thing. The future will wait for us, as it does."

He looked down at the device, then back to her eyes. "You called this a phone?"

"That's what everyone else calls it, so that's what I call it," Alleyana confirmed, gingerly taking the phone with her artificial hand -- visibly no different than the real one, of course, with all the armor involved. She stepped beside the other elf and held the phone so he could see the screen, turning it on.

"Basically, it works by touch. Gotta be careful about gauntlet fingertips if you don't want to scratch the hell out of it."

Holding it in her fake hand, her remaining hand was free to demonstrate how to access the network, the Inquisitor playing someone's video and someone else's voice post. She showed him where to tap to make either kind of post or reply, himself, and then moved to the actual phone functions.

After a moment of consideration, Alley added herself to his contacts in case he needed help later, adding a badly-taken picture to the entry to make it easier to tell who it was without reading.

"Fair enough." If a tree was a tree because everyone agreed on the word, the same should be true about a phone. She had his rapt attention as she explained the function of the device, and he could plainly see the usefulness of the item. It would allow for convenient communication across distances, and shorten response times should something arise.

After she finished, he nodded his thanks. "You are most kind. I thank you."

Alleyana offered the phone back, eyeing him again. Finally... "Now that I know we're both from Thedas; what's with the markings? I know that's not the usual vallaslin ink. Although some of it looks a bit like June," she tapped herself on the throat meaningfully, "and some a bit like Elgar'nan," and another tap, this one on her opposite bicep.

Elgar'nan's thorns no longer curled across her face in pale ink, but she hadn't lost her knowledge of those markings along with them.

He clenches his jaw, swallowing back the angry retort that sprang to the forefront of his mind. He didn't sense any hostility in her tone, only curiosity.

"I doubt they have any connection to the Dalish." He takes a breath before beginning. "My first memory is their application. The...pain it caused. They aren't ink. They're lyrium."

He met her eyes. "I have no memory of my life before them, but afterward, I was a Tevinter Magister's bodyguard, his 'little wolf'. He used me to intimidate his rivals. They grant me...abilities."

Lyrium?! Alleyana's eyes widened, and she couldn't help the reflexive half step back and aborted jerk of her arm toward her mace, as though preparing for a fight. It wasn't red lyrium; not corrupted, or he'd have been a maddened creature and this meeting would have gone very differently, just as it had for all the red templars she'd faced.

Her posture relaxed again. It wasn't red lyrium.

"I..." wait, a Magister had done this? "It wasn't Corypheus, was it?"

Edited 2017-09-24 09:44 (UTC)

Strange reaction, but the tested warrior only tensed, ready to strike. He relaxed on when she did.

"I know of no Corypheus." He shook his head. "No, his name is Danarius."

"In my time, the templar order had red lyrium forced on them. It grew out of their bodies and corrupted their minds," Alleyana's gaze dropped to Fenris' markings for a moment, the expression on her battered face just a little horrified. "I've never met someone with the regular stuff in them. Even the Sha-Brytol are only sealed in armor infused with it, it's not... in their skin. That we know of."

"Yes, they're singular and a novelty." It might have even been an amusing response if it hadn't been dripping with such venom. "Red lyrium...?" That was an idea beyond troubling, but he shook his head. "I can assure you I command my own mind."

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